


old ships (passing in the night)

by QueenWithABeeThrone



Series: a tale of two matts [4]
Category: Daredevil (Comics), Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Coffee Runs, F/M, Gen, Hospital Vigil, Marvel 616/MCU Crossover, Parkour, Patch-Ups, claire sighing deeply in the distance, this was supposed to be all funny but the last part snuck up on me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-03
Updated: 2015-06-03
Packaged: 2018-04-02 16:30:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,715
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4066807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueenWithABeeThrone/pseuds/QueenWithABeeThrone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>The first time Claire meets Matt's alternate universe version (and that, she reflects, is a sentence she never thought she'd have occasion to use), he hauls himself through her window and says, "Claire, right?"</i>
</p>
<p>Or: Claire Temple, and four meetings with the alternate Matt Murdock. Featuring: parking tickets, a parkour competition gone hilariously wrong, and a vigil for a friend.</p>
            </blockquote>





	old ships (passing in the night)

**Author's Note:**

> there's more. oh god.
> 
> at some point this series might actually grow a plot! kind of. but for now: I really, really wanted Claire's take on the whole "so my not-ex has an alternate self running around" issue. blame that.

The first time Claire meets Matt's alternate universe version (and that, she reflects, is a sentence she never thought she'd have occasion to use), he hauls himself through her window and says, "Claire, right?"

"You know, I have a perfectly good front door," she remarks, looking him up and down. This isn't the first time she's _seen_ him, per se--the first time had been at _her_ Matt's apartment, when Matt had called her in because there were three people in his apartment with varying degrees of injury and none of them could go to the hospital--but this is the first time she's seen him conscious. Now that he is, she finds herself cataloguing all the little differences between him and the Matt she'd pulled out of the dumpster: this Matt's taller, and when he pulls the mask up she sees unfocused blue eyes instead of brown.

"And what would the neighbors think?" this Matt jokes, lifting himself up off the windowsill and wincing, a gloved hand going to his side where there's an open gash, and he has to hold a hand out to steady himself before he goes to his knees. Claire's moving already, letting him sling an arm around her shoulder and half-dragging him to the couch, and she sends up a quiet prayer of thanks to whoever's looking out for Daredevil tonight. Both of them.

Like her Matt, this Matt doesn't say a word as she pokes and prods at his wounds with plastic-gloved fingers, nor does he say anything when she stitches the gash in his side closed.

"You're a lot more glib than my Matt," she says, absently, then pauses and adds, "Not _mine_ -mine, just--the Matt I know."

"I'm told I'm the fun one," this Matt remarks, his breath coming out in a little hiss as she presses the gauze to his wound.

"That's concerning," she says as she tapes the gauze. "I'd tell the both of you to quit going out and getting beaten up at night, but I know from experience that he wouldn't listen, and neither, I'm guessing, would you."

"You'd be right," Matt says, and she's silently glad he's blind, because then he doesn't see her lips turn up in a sad smile.

She doesn't ask him if it's possible to miss what could've been.

\--

The second time's a bit less quiet.

"What the hell," she says, when she flicks on the lights to see two grown men on her carpet, looking very injured and very guilty. Somehow _her_ Matt, in red with his mask pulled off to reveal some spectacular helmet hair, has managed to find the ice by himself and is pressing it to the impressive bruise on his forehead, and the older Matt, in black with the mask as a makeshift tourniquet around his forearm and a matching bruise on his cheekbone, is holding another ice pack to his own bruise.

They're also both glaring in each other's general direction, which is to say: the Matt she knows is glaring at her lamp, and the other Matt's glaring at her bookcase.

"My books and my lamp have done nothing to you," she says. "What happened?"

Both Matts turn their heads in her direction--which, bit creepy, it's probably an alternate universe twin thing--and a moment or two passes between them before her Matt says, "It's. Uh."

"Wall," says the other Matt darkly.

"Doesn't the--the radar thing tell you when there's a wall to avoid?" Claire asks, and the shared embarrassment that flickers across their faces says it all, really. "Did you two get yourselves injured because you were having a parkour contest?"

"The gash was from a knife-wielding mugger," says the other Matt.

"But the bruises are from the wall," says Claire.

The stony silence that greets her is all the answer she needs, and she lets out a long, resigned sigh.

(She lets them keep the ice packs, and stitches up the gashes and cuts from the muggers and thugs they run into all the time, but makes it very clear that they can deal with any bruises they get out of their semi-regular parkour competitions themselves.)

\--

The third time, she runs into Kirsten outside the courtroom first.

"Parking ticket, hearing's later," she says darkly. "You?"

Kirsten nods to the proceedings inside. "Jobrani," she says, and it takes Claire a moment to place the name--from one of Kirsten's stories, the Muslim storeowner who'd gone to Nelson & Murdock when no one else would take his case on. "His wife, anyway--apparently he died here and she's the owner now."

Claire wonders, for a moment, what it would feel like, to live in a world similar enough to your own that every little difference throws you off, to live in a world where the people you knew on your world are either different or, worse, dead, to have no other world to go back to now that yours is gone. "Must be weird," she says, finally.

"Eh, we never really met," Kirsten says, holding up a cup of coffee. She smiles, that devil-may-care (ha) smile that speaks of confidence and poise, but Claire's a nurse. She's observant enough to catch the wistfulness in Kirsten's eyes when her gaze flicks back towards the courtroom.

"You miss it?" she asks, and Kirsten glances back at her. "Lawyering."

"Not for long, I won't," she says, and there's a determined glint in her eyes that reminds Claire of fire. "We're going to take the bar again, a year from now."

"McDuffie rides again," Claire remarks, and Kirsten chuckles, sips at her coffee. There's an easy sort of camaraderie between them, the same kind that Kirsten and Karen share, different from what Claire and Karen have--though, there's a lot of things different from what Claire and Karen have, whatever it is. "Or will ride again."

"Damn straight I will," Kirsten agrees.

"So why are you out here?" Claire asks, and that's when Kirsten's Matt walks into view, tapping his way inside the lobby and whistling some old song that Claire recognizes from her own playlist. In one hand is an iced latte that Claire recognizes as one of Foggy's favorites, much to Claire's Matt's dismay.

(She should really stop referring to him as _hers_ , but. Well. She's got to distinguish the two Matts from each other somehow.)

Kirsten nods to her Matt, and says, "Coffee run."

"Claire, lovely to hear you," Matt says, walking over to the two of them. He smiles almost the same way hers does, but there's something lighter about it. "I thought you'd be at the hospital by now."

"Parking ticket," says Claire, darkly.

"Need any help with that?" he asks.

"Nah, just need to set a few things straight," she says, then gestures to the courtroom. "Shouldn't you be getting back in?"

"Yeah, but hey," says Kirsten, nudging Claire's shoulder, "wanna come with and kill some time before your hearing? I promise it's a lot more entertaining than _How to Get Away with Murder_."

"Anything would be," Matt mutters, and Kirsten jabs him in the side with her elbow and hisses something that sounds like _do not diss Annalise Keating, Murdock_. Claire's inclined to agree--she likes her--but curiosity drives her to say, "Sure, why not?"

(Her Matt is certainly a lot more dramatic than Annalise Keating, though, that's for sure--fifteen minutes in and already he's making an impassioned speech to the jury for his opening arguments.

She's pretty sure she can hear Kirsten mutter "dra- _Matt_ -ic" and chuckle softly to herself beside her, and frankly, she agrees with that.)

\--

The fourth time, he's sitting at his Foggy's bedside when Claire walks into the room.

She's seen this play a thousand times before, seen different players fill the same roles a hundred times today alone. It's harder, she finds, when it's a friend filling the role--she's helped this Foggy sift through case files and listened to his stories about his world, talked to him about his chemotherapy and gone out for drinks with him. She's not even going to mention this Matt, and the many, many times she's patched him up by now.

She hasn't seen him look this undone, she realizes. Not even last night, when she had to dig a shard of glass out of his side and then stitch him back together. He's always been glib towards her, even while pained, and so she feels like an intruder, seeing this older Matt laid low, vulnerable and bare and so, so scared.

She leaves the room, gets two cups of coffee, then pushes the door open once more. Matt still hasn't moved, and his fingers are running over the same line of the same file over and over again.

She sets one of the cups down on Foggy's bedside drawer, then pulls up a chair and nudges Matt's shoulder. His head lifts up in her direction, brows knitting together in a question.

"There's a cup of coffee on the drawer," she says. "How is he?"

"Fine," says Matt, sounding like he's trying to convince himself.

"Kirsten?"

"We're taking turns," Matt says, fingers absently running over the raised dots. She doubts he's really taking in any of the file right now. "I notice you're not asking about me."

"You're something of an open book," she tells him. "Besides, if I were to ask you right now if you were fine, would you say no?"

The silence that greets her is all the answer she needs.

She breaks it by saying, "You don't have to say anything. Not right now. But sitting here all night alone isn't really going to help either of you, and anyway--I'm not on duty right now." She takes a sip of her coffee, and adds, quiet, "He'll pull through." She's seen this a hundred times today already--she knows what a fighter looks like, and Foggy's a fighter.

Matt lets out a breath, and some of tension leaves his shoulders. He shuts the case file, and says, in the same tone of voice that Claire's heard from _her_ Matt, "Thank you, Claire."

She smiles, and bumps his shoulder in companionable silence.

_You're welcome,_ she doesn't say. She doesn't have to, she thinks--Matt already knows.

\--

fin.


End file.
